Destined to be together by Himring

Chapter 1

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She had not known how much it was going to hurt.

People did not warn you how much it hurt, losing a dog. Okay, maybe some did, but the ones who did were so self-satisfied and smug about their wisdom in not acquiring a dog that she ignored them on principle.

She had called him Huan. Someone had told her that the name just meant “Dog” in Elvish, but she had named him for the dog in the tale.  She had picked the name partly because he was big, big enough that at the time when she named him the notion of riding him didn’t seem completely absurd. She was quite a lot younger then and small for her age. She had also picked that name because he had chosen her, not she him, as Huan had chosen Luthien.

Of course, she wasn’t like Luthien in any other way. In fact, with her temper, those who knew her would be more likely to compare her to Celegorm, she supposed. But Huan hadn’t thought she was like Celegorm. He had chosen her and he had stuck with her, never leaving her, despite her flaws and many, many mistakes. Except that now he was dead.

She sat on the beach, hunched up, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

‘Oh Huan, Huan!’

 

An unfamiliar pair of feet approached her and a shadow fell across her.

‘Go away,’ she muttered.

The feet stayed.

She looked up reluctantly. The man was a complete stranger and perhaps stronger and more dangerous than he seemed. He looked pale, vaguely foreign. But all that was irrelevant. She could count the people she would have been willing to be close enough to speak to in this state on fewer than the fingers of one hand. This stranger certainly wasn’t among them, even if his intentions might possibly be good.

He opened his mouth.

‘Get lost,’ she snarled, before he could say anything and looked pointedly away from him.

This time, he went. In fact, he seemed to disappear astonishingly quickly, but maybe that was just because she wasn’t interested.

Nevertheless, she felt a certain restlessness grow on her after that. It became harder just to sit staring at her legs and the sand underneath and eventually she got up and wandered aimlessly along the beach, mainly bent on avoiding people, but gradually approaching in her meanderings the far end, where the river flowed into the sea and the sand was muddy.

If she hadn’t, she would have missed it. She almost did anyway. But the movement caught her eye, some way off, and she instantly realized the sack Adho was carrying must contain a living creature and what he and his ghastly group of friends were planning to do with that creature, on the bank of the river.

On a good day, she might have at least tried the gentle art of negotiation, as far as she was capable of it. Not that the voice of sweet reason ever had much effect on Adho, who was a thorough bully and considered her a freak, and her patience with him always ran out really quickly.

Today, grief had left her virtually without speech and she had no time for Adho at all. She emitted a wordless howl of rage, not very loud and hardly even intended as a warning, and straight away she attacked.

 

It wasn’t, of course, wise. She was no longer as small as she had been, nor was she weak, but she was not tall, and Adho and his friends were larger and heavier. Together they easily outmatched her. But they were not well coordinated as a group and got in each other’s way and she got a few good punches in before their numbers began to tell.

Still, she could feel that she was losing and that things were about to go very badly for her, when suddenly they weren’t and she wasn’t. Somebody else had joined the fray. She didn’t get a clear sight of the newcomer at first, but there seemed to be only one of them and nevertheless they were making surprisingly short work of her opponents.

Sooner than seemed possible, they were left in possession of the field; that is, she was bent over, struggling for breath, her new-found ally was holding the sack with its rescued occupant, and Adho and his friends were running away very, very quickly. They did turn around at a distance to yell an insult or two, but were evidently too frightened to feel safe even at that remove and prudently retreated townwards.

Her unexpected ally turned out to be the stranger she had snapped at earlier. She supposed it could have been considered creepy how he had suddenly reappeared. She had not been at all aware of his following her. But he was standing well away from her and his whole attention seemed to be on the liberated sack, at which he was making calming noises. Despite his dexterity as a fighter, he seemed to have a bit of trouble untying it. Finally, the cord gave. He knelt and gently released the sack's occupant onto the sand.

It turned out to be a small and malnourished, but surprisingly self-possessed cat. It emerged from the sack that had threatened to convey it to its doom, sat down to give its back a brief lick and then fixed its look on her.

Mrrow, it said.

‘Wait, what? No way, cat, I’m a dog person…’

And besides she was still in mourning for Huan. So why did her protests sound rather thin and unconvincing to her own ears?

‘I’m afraid I have to break it to you,’ said the stranger, sounding quietly amused, as the cat advanced on her with a distinctively possessive air, ‘that this cat has already firmly decided that you are her human and will brook no contradiction.’

‘Can’t you take her?’ she asked weakly.

The little cat had reached her ankles and her resistance was wavering.

‘Definitely not. She would never agree. Besides I’ll be moving on soon and I don’t think this is the wandering kind of cat!’

‘Oh.’

‘Celegorm would have appreciated you, you know,’ the stranger said.

‘Thank you,’ she said distractedly, gazing at the cat weaving about her legs.

Then his words registered and her eyes opened, wide and questioning, forgetting her new pet for just a moment.

A faint shrug, a slight sad smile.

‘Will you be all right, you two? Those boys…’

‘We’ll be all right, now. I do have friends here,’ she assured him.

‘Good. Your cat friend looks as if she could use a feed. I’ve got a bit of fish for her, over there.’

"Over there" was in fact a small camp, half invisible among the marram grass and the dunes. The cat graciously accepted the fish and consented to ride in the crook of her arm into town.

She would quite have liked to ask the stranger a few questions now, but she could tell he didn’t want to be asked. He deftly fended off her belated thanks for his help, as well, and also an attempt at least to really say goodbye to him.

 

Her new companion, when in better health and better fed, turned out to have lovely dark grey fur that with a bit of poetic licence could be compared to a shadowy cloak. She already had a theme going, so she named the cat Luthien. Also because the cat always came and found her, as Luthien had with Beren.

Not that she was at all like Beren in any other way. That’s what she thought anyway. As Beren was renowned for being the friend of animals, her friends might not have agreed…

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Chapter End Notes

Sequential prompts:

Part 1) A character begins the story unaware of something important.

Part 2) Your character is left speechless. You decide why. 

Part 3) Someone in your story gets good news.

I've only sort of filled these but, if you look, it's there.

 

"Adho" is the Westron name for the Tengwa Anto, according to Tolkien Gateway. I decided to use it as a name for the boy in the story. It's probably a nickname.